Body Electric
by RagingContent
Summary: [One-Shot] I shouldn't have to die because I ran, I was literally made for that! Well, maybe not running away...


_**Gentlemen, I'm back.**_

 **... Yeah, I was oh hiatus. Whoop. Whatever, story time!**

 **This was heavily based off of The Body Electric, a song by Rush (hence the title of this story). So yes, I did use the title of the song. I do not own the song. Sorry for any confusion that I may cause. ( _I also recommend reading the lyrics because damn, they do a much better job than my clumsy story._ ) **

**I apologize for anything that looks, sounds or tastes like copying. I do not own the character or the inspiration, only the plot and the final product.**

 **(As a side note I made while writing, everywhere you see an _SOS_ (bolded and italicized) is where I meant to put the Morse Code for, well, SOS. However, it seems that FanFiction does not like Morse Code. Bad FanFiction.)**

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 _"One humanoid escapee, one android on the run  
Seeking freedom beneath the lonely desert sun"  
-The Body Electric, by Rush_

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 ** _The Body Electric_**

 ** _SOS..._**

Was this what dying felt like?

This particular Scout wouldn't know.

Unlike the RED counterpart that he had had the task of fighting, he had never been through Respawn. He had never been forced to the brink of death, only to be brought back just when he thought he could get away. Heck, he hadn't been close to dying even when there _hadn't been_ a Respawn. For once, this was a Scout that wasn't familiar with pain, or suffering. Or fear, or pride, or... Heck, _anything!_

Robots didn't have a Respawn, after all, and they weren't designed to have feelings. Or pain.

This ill-fated escape came pretty close to 'suffering,' though.

 ** _SOS..._**

His footsteps were slow, clumsy, faltering, and he stumbled over even the smallest objects in his path. His optical processors burned from taking in the pale desert landscape, practically burning from the harsh sunlight. His left hand twitched erratically, one of the early 'symptoms' of a data overload, while his right hand was still weakly clamped on his baseball bat, the one he had taken with him when he had run.

He wished he could just drop the stupid weapon, leave it behind. There was a reason why he had run, and it wasn't because he wanted to fight anything.

He carried the damn bat anyway.

 ** _SOS..._**

He had never felt pain before, but now he could feel the greatest facsimile of it that a mechanical being could face... His computer 'brain' was corrupting under the stress, the figurative suffering of keeping himself functional. A spray of electrical sparks frayed from his left wrist (Had the wiring melted? He wouldn't be surprised), and a certain... Forgetfulness (Is that what the humans called it?) started to invade his core processor even as he walked.

 _How many pellets are left in my scattergun? Do I still have my baseball? How many robots and humans did I just leave behind? Will they just fight each other until they're all either dead or offline? Why are they even fighting?_

 _Why am I stuck in this stupid sandpit anyway? Was I sent here or-_

And... BANG!

He fell to the dirt with a heavy, metallic _CLANG!_ , along with a second, lighter ring a moment later as the damn bat fell from his hand. With a feeble attempt at trying to getback up single-handedly, his left arm still infuriatingly useless, he was taking 35% longer to process what had happened that what it would usually take. Had his balance calibrator gone offline, or was it something else; something more serious?

"Well, crap," He grumbled weakly, softly, in his electronic warble. With a curse to himself for being weak and the desert for making him weak, he tried to get up again, still talking the whole time. His right hand was now starting to twitch softly, too. "Left my crowded personal Hell, just to get to this freaking desert. And this stupid dustbowl is my _lonely_ personal Hell."

He had heard from the other mechs, Gray's other robots, about the RED mercenaries that he would have eventually had to face. A Heavy-bot, designate 0157, had told him that the one mercenary, Scout, hated being alone, so was it just a coincidence that this Scout-bot felt the same or had he been programmed to be this way? Either way, he hated this dusty, torturous place with every nut, bolt and circuit of his dying being.

"Wait - dying? Where'd- _where-where-_ " His vocal track started to loop, like a broken record, and he quickly shut up before he lost any more of his dying pride. "Well, crap."

 _But, still... Where the heck_ did _that come from? Robots can't die!_ The thought raced feverishly through his mind, as he gave up the attempts at getting up and instead started to grab for his stupid bat.

His fingers, his hands, wouldn't respond to the commands he was giving. The silver facsimile of an arm remained frustratingly still in the dust, sprawled beside him from his feeble tries at getting up.

Maybe it was a protocol, buried deep in his circuits, that made him want to have a weapon, even when he wouldn't need it?

 ** _SOS..._**

"Who th _e-who the-the-the-th_ e heck cares? I'm-" His vocal tracks made the robotic equivalent of a voice crack - a burst of static - even as he finished off his sentence with the choked, weak words of, "I'm gonna die here, aren't I?"

 _Robots can't die, moron!_

"Shut up, me." Giving up and lying face-down in the dirt, he gave up trying to grab his bat again. In other words, he finally gave up.

Some humanistic instinct inside of him, deep in his coding, urged him to get up, get out of here, find someone or something that could help. It grasped at life, and for a split-second, it felt like nothing could counter it.

And then some other part of his coding shouted back, _Shut the hell up, we're dying and there's nothing you can do!_

"And now I'm going crazy. Gre _-e-ea_ t."

He shouldn't have human instincts, heck, he shouldn't have _instincts._ If there was one thing that he wasn't, then he wasn't human. Gray Mann, the Maker, had made that brutally clear, back when 0047 had first been activiated to fight the humans. And this blatant disrespect for anything not human was why he, 0047, had run away.

 _My name is... I have no name, my designate is 0047. I am designed after the human mercenary of RED, designate "Scout." My purpose is-WAS, to haul a bomb to, and destroy, the RED base designated CoalTown._

 ** _SOS..._**

 _My creator - ALL HAIL THE MAKER! - crap, the Hailing circuit's still online and functional - my Maker doesn't have, and won't have, any respect for me or any of the robots. I ran away from the Creator. Because of that._

 ** _SOS..._**

 _The creator will-will-will- well, that's getting annoying\- The creator will kill me if I go-go-go-go back._

 ** _SOS..._**

 _I'm going to die anyway. May as well save my dignity. If a robot created for destruction has any._

 ** _SOS..._**

 _Shit. Someone, anyone, please..._

 ** _SOS..._**

 _SOS._

His circuits frying under the blistering-hot sun, alone in the dust, he could barely feel his core processor shooting off warnings. His left hand twitching slowly and subconsiously, 0047 finally collapsed to the ground. The dusty, hard, unforgiving ground.

And, at the edge of his vision, the last thing he saw was a flash of white.

 _The sun? That 'heaven' place that the humans think might exist? Or something else?_

 _If this 'heaven' exists, do robots go there?_

 ** _SOS..._**

 _Please. Someone._

 ** _SOS..._**

 _Please._

 ** _SOS..._**

 _I'm a robot. I shouldn't feel pain._

 ** _SOS..._**

 _I shouldn't have to die._

 _SOS._

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 **Any reviews are appreciated. Even the ones from broken-feels people who promise me great bodily harm for writing this.**


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